


What Makes a Friend

by nothingeverlost



Series: Storybrooke High [9]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-08
Updated: 2013-01-08
Packaged: 2017-11-24 05:32:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/630977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingeverlost/pseuds/nothingeverlost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’re not going to tell me they’ll kill me, or cause cancer or something?”  Damn doctors were always around when you didn’t want them, or they couldn’t help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Makes a Friend

**Author's Note:**

> This is a direct follow up to Needed and Wanted, the SBH verse fic in which Belle had a miscarriage. And when I say direct, I mean picking up like a minute after that one ends. Basically Ruby said “I have feels” and needed to work through them. Also, I figured out where Archie fits in this verse.

The cafeteria was closed, not that she really cared. She’d only told Mr. Gold - she couldn’t think of him as Nick, no matter how many times Belle referred to him that way - that she was going there because it was the first place to come to mind. Belle had been asking for her boyfriend - it was almost as strange to call him that - since the drive to the hospital. They needed to be alone, and Ruby needed to be out of the cloying and medicinal smelling place.

She hated hospitals. Her parents had both died in one, her mother after cancer had stripped her of every dignity and her father not long after, when they couldn’t pump the pills from his stomach fast enough. Until today she’d managed to avoid them for almost a decade. Only someone as important as Belle, her best friend and roommate, could have gotten her back into one. She’d barely noticed, in the emergency room when Belle had been bleeding and sobbing. It was this afternoon, as Belle dozed, that the restlessness and need to escape had hit her. She’d stayed, though. 

Never had she been so glad to hear her former teacher’s voice.

It had been just after lunch, when she’d entered the hospital. Now it was dark out, late enough that there was only the occasional car driving past. Ruby dug through her purse for her phone, planning on checking her messages, and found a pack of cigarettes. She didn’t smoke, not regularly, but sometimes it was the thing to do at parties. Sometimes, if she was honest, it was a way to attract attention from the wrong kind of guy or fit in with the exact people Granny wouldn’t want her knowing. In the moment, though, it was something to do that wasn’t freaking out about her best friend, the fact that she’d been pregnant, or the fact that she’d looked so broken when she’d realized that she wasn’t anymore. Belle had wanted that kid, and the man that had helped create it. Ruby hadn’t given a thought to the future beyond graduating in two and a half years, and hadn’t had a relationship make it to the six month mark. She pressed her lips together to hold the cigarette as she dug for a lighter.

“You have to be farther away from the building.”

“The fuck?” Ruby jumped and turned to the side. There was a man there, leaning against the wall of the building, dressed in scrubs and lab coat. The glasses and the look in his eyes said forties, at least, but his smile and red hair made him look younger.

“Sorry, I thought you knew I was out here. I wasn’t hiding. The cigarette.” He nodded at her mouth. “You have to be a hundred feet away from the building if you want to smoke.”

“You’re not going to tell me they’ll kill me, or cause cancer or something?” Damn doctors were always around when you didn’t want them, or they couldn’t help.

“I think everyone knows how bad they are. It’s your choice, though.” He frowned a little, as if he wanted to say more.

“Yeah, it is.” She only played with the lighter, though. Walking out into the darkened parking lot seemed more dangerous than smoking. Besides, all she really wanted was to be out of the building. “Guess it’s my choice if I decide not to, too.”

“Are you alright? You look…” He frowned, taking half a step forward. His hair was even more obviously red in the brighter light. “…troubled.”

“I really don’t like hospitals.” She would leave, if she was one hundred percent sure that Belle didn’t need her. She wasn’t, though, and needed to check on her one more time to make sure Gold was treating her properly. She’d never seen them together, outside of class and the masks they’d obviously been wearing well. It wasn’t until they’d started sharing a room and she’d noticed her friend’s long e-mails and frequent phone calls that Belle had ‘confessed.’

He better be taking good care of her.

“I didn’t use to like them either.” He took another step closer. There were still four or five feet between them, but she could see that his scrubs were wrinkled and there were dark circles under his eyes. She was sure she looked like crap too; her makeup had all been washed away hours ago, when she’d scrubbed with cold water to try and keep from crying, and pull herself together.

“Kind of a strange job to get into, isn’t it, if you don’t like hospitals?” Talking to people, even strangers, wasn’t hard for Ruby. She’d worked her Granny’s diner all through high school, and was good and talking to anyone about anything. It was almost like auto pilot, and felt better than picking at words to try and find the right ones to comfort her friend.

“I like to help people. I’d do it somewhere else if I could, but my field is neurosurgery.”

“Like cutting open people’s heads and working on their brains?” Ruby wrinkled her nose. Blood was bad enough, but brains? “That’s weird.”

“Brain and the spinal cord. I had a little boy, today, who had a tumor growing between two vertebrae. It’s too soon to tell, but if everything goes well he should be able to walk again. He hasn’t, in six months.” He smiled, and there was something about it that made the knot in Ruby’s stomach loosen a little.

“You can really do something like that? Make a kid walk?” Most of what she knew from doctors was bad news, and though the logical part of her knew that they helped people too she hadn’t experienced it.

“The brain and… and the neural pathways control so much of who we are. We don’t think, most of the time, about the fact that even something so simple as wiggling a finger is a message sent from the hand to the brain and back to the hand again, before it actually happens.” He wiggled the fingers on one of his hands. Ruby, surprisingly, found herself laughing. Perhaps not as surprisingly the laugh turned into a sob. She turned away and covered her mouth with a hand, not wanting to let the stranger see her upset. She didn’t like to let even friends, other than a few closest like Belle and Mary Margaret, see her cry.

“Tissue?” His voice was soft, but closer than before. She looked over her shoulder to find a packet of Kleenex being held out to her. 

“I’m okay,” she managed, after a few seconds, biting the inside of her cheek and wiping away the tears with her palms. “It’s just been a long day.”

“Family?”

“My best friend. She lost… she was going to have a baby.”

“I’m sorry.” There was a rustling of plastic, and this time when he held out his hand there was a snack sized bag of Nilla Wafers. “Helps with the blood sugar. I bet you haven’t eaten for a while.”

“You keep cookies in your pocket?” Cookies and kleenex; she had to wonder what else a brain doctor carried around.

“Sometimes I don’t have time to eat, but at least I can snack as I walk from one place to the next, or when I have a minute tom come outside like now. Plus Pongo likes them.”

“Pongo?”

“My dog. A dalmatian. I know it’s not good to give them too much sugar, but just one can’t be too bad. He’ll do almost anything I say, for one of these.” He held out the bag a little farther, and Ruby accepted. She was hungry, something she was only just beginning to notice. Tired, too, but there wasn’t anything she could do about that right now.

“Thank you.”

“Archie,” he said, then suddenly looked down at his shoes, a bemused smile turning up the corners of his mouth. “I mean my name. It occurs to me that I haven’t introduced myself and you might find it weird, eating something a stranger gave to you.”

“Doctor Archie, huh?” He was right, to the extent that if it had been anything other than a sealed package she wouldn’t have accepted it; Granny had drilled the lesson about taking things from strangers into her head.

“D-doctor Hopper, but most people call me Archie. I prefer it.” He tugged on the edge of his lab coat, and Rudy knew enough about people to see that he was nervous. Why, she wasn’t sure. If it was a guy her own age she’d think he was nervous because of her, but Hopper - Archie - was a brain doctor. He probably had a wife and kids waiting for him at home, along with his dog.

“Even your patients?” She ate two of the cookies at once, and felt like she could inhale the rest. She was starving.

“Especially them. You’re asking a person to put themselves completely in your hands, to let you cut them open and touch their brain, the thing that basically controls everything they are. That requires trust, and starting with offering a name rather than a title is one way to establish that. Plus I don’t really do the whole formality thing very well. I’d rather be with patients or my dog, when I’m at home, than dealing with the political side of the job, or trying to impress anyone with the fact that I’m a doctor.” The slight stuttering fell away when he spoke of his patients. She could imagine that the little boy he’d spoken of had no trouble speaking to Archie, as opposed to Doctor Hopper.

“I’m Ruby. And thanks for the cookies. And the distraction. I really needed a few minutes of something that wasn’t that.” She waved her hand over her shoulder at the building behind them.

“How is your friend doing?”

“I don’t know. She’s slept a lot. And cried. I didn’t even know, until it was too late. She wanted to tell her… the baby’s father before anyone. He just got here; that’s why I’m down here.” She sighed. “I don’t know what to do for her. I’ve always been the one to go first, you know? First to get my period, which was good because she didn’t have a mom to help her with stuff like that. First to have sex. But this… I can’t imagine what it was like to think you were going to have a kid, or what it’s like not to anymore.”

“I think the important thing is that you want to help her. Sometimes just being there is all we can do.”

“It doesn’t feel like enough.” Belle had always been there for her. She was the smart one, the kind one. Ruby was the brave one, and the one that could make Belle laugh, but that didn’t help right now. “But I guess that’s Gold’s job anyway, at least for tonight. I should go check on her so I can figure out the bus thing and go home.”

“I could… I mean I was planning on leaving soon, if you wanted a ride? The buses take forever this time of night, and you look like you could use some sleep.”

“You don’t have to do that.” She really hoped she didn’t look that crappy. Or sound like she was hinting for a ride or anything like that.

“I don’t mind, really. In fact you’d be doing Pongo a favor. I was just going to stay to do paperwork, but if I took you I’d be home to let him out that much sooner.” He took off his glasses and cleaned them on his sleeve. “Anyone at the nurse’s station can tell you that I really am a doctor here, and not a serial killer or anything.”

“I believe you.” She had pretty good instincts about people. She’d been right about Whale being slime, when he’d come onto Mary Margaret. Right about Emma being cool, too. She’d know something was up with Belle as well, even if she hadn’t figured her friend for being one to sneak around with a teacher. “Alright, if you’re sure. It’s not too far.”

“I’m sure, Ruby.” He smiled, a real, relaxed smile. For a minute she almost forgot that he was a doctor. He was kind of cute.

“Meet you back down here in the lobby in ten?” She only needed to see with her own eyes that Belle was going to be alright for the night; she’d be back in the morning.

“I’ll be here,” he promised as they walked inside.

Ruby took the elevator to the fifth floor, and headed for Belle’s room. Her friend was asleep. The chair she’d sat in all evening was empty. Gold was rather cramped looking in the bed, curled around Belle as if he could shield her from the world. Their hands were joined, and though there were tear marks on Belle’s cheeks that hadn’t been there earlier, Ruby couldn’t blame her former teacher. Not wanting to disturb them, Ruby quietly started to back out of the room.

“She told me you didn’t leave her side, even when the doctors tried to make you.” The familiar Scottish accent startled her; she’d assumed that he was asleep as well.

“She needed me.” Ruby shrugged. Doctors were know-it-all asses. At least most of them, she amended mentally, thinking of Archie’s face as he’d talked about the little boy he’d operated on.

“Thank you. Knowing that she didn’t have to go through this alone helps, a little. You’re a good friend.” His voice broke twice, his voice scratchy. He didn’t look like he’d cried; she wondered if he’d bitten the inside of his cheek as well. Ruby hadn’t thought about the fact that it was his kid too.

“She’s a better one.” The closest thing to a sibling Ruby had. Seeing that even now Gold’s hand was covering Belle’s made it easier to leave for the night. Besides, three was a crowd. “Take care of her, alright? I’m going home for the night.”

“It’s late to catch the bus.” Gold, Belle’s boyfriend, certainly worried more about people than he did when he was their teacher. Or maybe she was just seeing him differently now.

“A friend is giving me a ride home. I’ll be alright.” Friend might be stretching things a bit. Then again, she felt better than she did an hour ago. And what was it he’d said earlier? Sometimes being a friend meant just being there.

“If you’re sure.” He turned a little, and brushed a strand of hair out of Belle’s face with his free hand. She hadn’t seen anyone look at another person like that, not since her mom died and her dad had faded. “We’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, tomorrow Nick.” Wow, did that feel weird to say out loud. It sounded weird in her head as well. She’d have to ask Belle home long it took before it wasn’t so weird.

Ruby half expected to find the lobby empty, when she got off the elevator. She’d deal, though; the bus system wasn’t too hard to figure out, and it wasn’t so late that they’d stopped running. But as the doors opened she found the tall redhead, waiting. The labcoat was gone; instead he wore slacks, a shirt, and of all things a sweater vest. It should have looked incredibly silly, but somehow it was comforting, and just a little bit geeky. It suited him.

“Ready to go?” he asked, not quite meeting her eyes. Maybe he, too, thought that he’d find the lobby empty.

“Always ready to break out of a hospital.” She followed him out of the building and back into the fresh air. “Thanks, Archie.”


End file.
